Re: Pre-release marketing and community management [Was: getting www.gnome3.org]
On 01/06/2011 08:00 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: I'm not really that worn down. If you are, you're emotionally investing too much into it. I haven't said much during this exchange, but this response surprised me. Developers getting worn down by the hate is a real thing. It's so not fair to say that developers who get worn down are too emotionally invested or are otherwise doing it wrong. We have this problem with Miro right now where we've got a tiny staff of developers and no customer relations kind of person. Thus developers like me end up sifting through the hate. We've been discussing this problem on our mailing list and it's probably the case all the devs are going to stop reading the forums. This got sent out this morning and really summed up the whole problem for us: http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2011/01/three-reasons-creators-should-never.html This isn't anything new. This is not a developers who feel worn down are deficient problem. This is a there needs to be someone in between problem. My question is one of ignorance: does the GNOME community have a team of people who stand between the developers and the various forums? /will -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Pre-release marketing and community management [Was: getting www.gnome3.org]
Hi Will, On Sat, Jan 8, 2011 at 4:37 AM, will kahn-greene wi...@bluesock.org wrote: On 01/06/2011 08:00 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: I'm not really that worn down. If you are, you're emotionally investing too much into it. I haven't said much during this exchange, but this response surprised me. Developers getting worn down by the hate is a real thing. It's so not fair to say that developers who get worn down are too emotionally invested or are otherwise doing it wrong. My comment was in response to Dave. Neither of us are developers but both of us are doing non-technical things. The original problem statement was that exactly as you describe that developers can be worn out by hate. But I was talking about community people like myself should not get worn down by hate precisely because we're approaching community management from a different perspective. We have this problem with Miro right now where we've got a tiny staff of developers and no customer relations kind of person. Thus developers like me end up sifting through the hate. We've been discussing this problem on our mailing list and it's probably the case all the devs are going to stop reading the forums. This got sent out this morning and really summed up the whole problem for us: Yes, this is a real issue and you need non-developer types who can help you in community management. There are a lot of people who have a sense of entitlement and sometimes that must be approached with a firm hand. The goal is to take those people and see if we can make them useful contributors in other ways. Bring them into your development cycle as triage, marketing and whatever. http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2011/01/three-reasons-creators-should-never.html This isn't anything new. This is not a developers who feel worn down are deficient problem. This is a there needs to be someone in between problem. Developers being worn down is a symptom of a problem of a lack of communications. My question is one of ignorance: does the GNOME community have a team of people who stand between the developers and the various forums? Not traditionally. In a normal cycle we don't generally need to do much community management. This is likely because Ubuntu, Fedora, and other distros are managing the desktop experience. But with GNOME 3.0 we are sort of in a place where I and some others believe that community management is required in the short term. We'll probably need to do it for a couple of releases. If you're interested in community management there are plenty of blog posts on the subject. I think Jono himself wrote up a post on it on Planet GNOME. You probably can engage Jono in a conversation on IRC or if you can grab him at a conference he's pretty approachable. Your link makes a good argument against forums which I had brought up in this thread. sri -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Pre-release marketing and community management [Was: getting www.gnome3.org]
Stormy Peters wrote: On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 6:09 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna s...@ramkrishna.me wrote: We didn't do this for 2.0 which fed into a lot of rage on a number of forums. Nobody could understand why we were removing features or the philosophy behind it. Because of that history, Gnome 3.0 will fall into the same cycle. Let's hope we can avoid doing it this time with a little forethought now that we are a lot more mature project. :-) So my concern isn't making sure everyone agrees or even gets it but rather that everyone who wants to can explain why we did it (or at least point to somewhere that does explain.) Is someone willing to go through archives and talk to the people close to the decision to try to document the features and rationale? That was my plan for the shell design page. I'm familiar with most of the design principles as well as the documentation which has been produced. I can also dredge the lists, and I can harass Jon and Jimmac if it comes down to it. :) Sri's comments earlier in this thread point to the desire for an evidence base or some kind of research into the shell. I think we do have some good material there, as I pointed out on desktop-devel recently [1]. We need that in a public place too. Allan [1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2011-January/msg00105.html -- Blog: http://afaikblog.wordpress.com/ IRC: aday on irc.gnome.org -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Pre-release marketing and community management [Was: getting www.gnome3.org]
Hi, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: Yes, if you're defining developers as maintainers of core modules. Unfortunately, people will go into deskop-devel because there is no community mailing list that they can go to. So they will participate in the forum that they believe has the audience they seek. Unless you close DDL of course. It is not the job of the mailing lists to provide an expert audience to non-experts who want to complain to them. If we need to moderate d-d-l to reclaim it for Real Work, then so be it. How about creating a forum or something and keep such people out of the regular mailing lists instead? http://www.gnomesupport.org could use more visibility some official community buy-in. A more active Development forum would be useful. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Pre-release marketing and community management [Was: getting www.gnome3.org]
Hi, Allan Day wrote: Sri's comments earlier in this thread point to the desire for an evidence base or some kind of research into the shell. I think we do have some good material there, as I pointed out on desktop-devel recently [1]. We need that in a public place too. Bear in mind when publishing research that the response can be lukewarm if the content doesn't live (cf. betterdesktop.org initiative Anna Dirks from Novell was involved in a few years back). (just a data point) Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Pre-release marketing and community management [Was: getting www.gnome3.org]
Hi Allan, On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 1:29 AM, Allan Day allanp...@gmail.com wrote: Is someone willing to go through archives and talk to the people close to the decision to try to document the features and rationale? That was my plan for the shell design page. I'm familiar with most of the design principles as well as the documentation which has been produced. I can also dredge the lists, and I can harass Jon and Jimmac if it comes down to it. :) That'd be great. We could start it on the wiki and then move it to gnome3.org/... when it's ready. Stormy -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Pre-release marketing and community management [Was: getting www.gnome3.org]
Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 8:41 AM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: Hi, Stormy Peters wrote: It seems like we need two things: 1) a website to speak to the world (our our community) about GNOME 3.0 - that's gnome3.org http://gnome3.org 2) a place for all those interested in helping with community management to share stories and ideas - is that this list? Just to avoid a Vizzini Inigo Montoya moment later on [1], can I just ask: what do people here mean when they talk about community management? I think in this case, we want to be a buffer between devs and enthusiasts. In general, I want to address the frustration devs feel with having to continually defend design decisions by people who fear change. By continuing to address them and to focus on positive aspects of the Gnome shell design. In addition, we can also perhaps turn shrill user enthusiasts to hopefully people who will contribute positively. But my motivation is really to get people off devs back so that they can focus on getting the design done. And since you decide to give a video response. I have one in turn. :-) Personally speaking, I'd add a few other ambitions: * Ensuring that those from outside the project have a positive experience when they come into contact with GNOME. A bit more micromanagement here would help our public relations, I think. * Communicating and explaining the direction of the project. 3 dot oh involves some big changes and our community would benefit from some positive messages in that regard. Do those sound useful? Also: GNOME 3 is going to be met with criticism. We don't know how much, but there's definitely going to be some. Sri made a really good point to me the other day - we need well-rehearsed and effective responses to those criticisms, and this kind of community management is an opportunity to identify and rehearse those arguments. Maybe we could work together to produce some kind of PR play sheet? Or would that be taking things too far? Allan -- Blog: http://afaikblog.wordpress.com/ IRC: aday on irc.gnome.org -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Pre-release marketing and community management [Was: getting www.gnome3.org]
On 01/05/2011 03:01 PM, Paul Cutler wrote: Hi Allan, Thanks for kicking off this discussion. Andreas and I did some work on GNOME3.org which can be found on Github: https://github.com/andreasn/gnome3-website We were pretty close - the design is done and some of the copy needs to be updated. We were waiting for some videos and screenshots and then we wanted to launch it, but it's a bit stalled. I don't see any reason we couldn't take it, update the screenshots and copy, and launch it fairly quickly. Agreed, this page have been to long in the making. Doing some screenshots instead of videos for now sounds like a good compromise. Will fix some screenshots, kill some content (the a11y, devs and applications pages for now, until we have some content for those) and hopefully we can get something live maybe this weekend (this probably means next week). - Andreas -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Pre-release marketing and community management [Was: getting www.gnome3.org]
Hi, Allan Day wrote: Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: I think in this case, we want to be a buffer between devs and enthusiasts. Ah... I'm not a big fan of buffers. I prefer trying to quieten people down when they're distracting. That means channelling the noise elsewhere, and perhaps taking a slightly drastic measure of moderating all posts to d-d-l for a few months. In general, I want to address the frustration devs feel with having to continually defend design decisions by people who fear change. Characterising any questions/queries/doubts/fears about GNOME 3 as people who fear change is not going to win friends and influence people. We need to start framing the way we talk about this issue correctly, because the way we talk about it affects the way we think about it, affects the way others perceive us. But my motivation is really to get people off devs back so that they can focus on getting the design done. So - to summarise: the problems I've seen are: * A lot of GNOME members (be it foundation members, translators, members of teams not directly involved in the shell, even members of the release team, but also those shrill activists) do not have all of the rationale thought processes that have gone into GNOME Shell. Most people have not been following the shell list or the release team archives. So some major decisions are coming out piecemeal and are presented as faits accomplis - this is the way things are, live with it. The shell team and release team have not been their own best friend in this respect. * There appears to be cognitive dissonance between the resources that some GNOME people believe are there for maintenance and the resources that are actually there - esp. related to fallback mode - panel + applets + metacity. * A lot of people (myself included) are worried whether we're going to need hardware that a substantial proportion of our user base just don't have. And we can fix all these things by: (To fill the knowledge gap:) - Documenting any major design decisions made in the shell and their rationale, and presenting those in a nicer way - Ensure that the release team is also framing things in a nicer way, and explaining the rationale behind things rather than just saying that's the why. Notably, I think the release team should say that panel support is a question of manpower not policy, and it'd be nice if Jon backed that up. - We need to start talking about all that's good in shell, what it brings to the table, and why it's better than what went before. Videos, success stories, interviews with happy users, all that kind of thing (To be clear on what we want to see done but can't commit to, versus what we definitely don't want to see done) - Help the release team and the shell team draft a Here's stuff we're against list (with justifications) and Here's stuff we'd like to see in GNOME 3.0, but there's just no way we can commit to getting it done with the resources we have (things like Orca) - I'd also live to see the GNOME project as a whole be clearer on who's involved in the actual maintenance of core modules and what developer resources there actually are - I'd estimate it at 40 to 50 full time developers, but I suspect I'm on the high side there. (To allay fears of hardware compat issues) - Draw up a list of graphics cards used in desktop hardware in the past 3 to 5 years, ordered by market share/volume of sales, and match that to current compatibility of free software drivers for the hardware with the 3D requirements of Clutter. Ideally, someone with a GNOME 2.x desktop should be able to run a command, get a chipset, and be able to tell before he installs how well GNOME 3 will work. - Start publishing screenshots of fallback mode on chipsets that don't support it making sure it's still a nice experience. Personally speaking, I'd add a few other ambitions: * Ensuring that those from outside the project have a positive experience when they come into contact with GNOME. A bit more micromanagement here would help our public relations, I think. This is a vast task, and I'm not sure how we can make a big dent in it with limited volunteer resources - even doing basic communication of the project goals and allaying concerns people have is probably more than we can manage, but it is pretty much a minimum. * Communicating and explaining the direction of the project. 3 dot oh involves some big changes and our community would benefit from some positive messages in that regard. Absolutely agree. Do those sound useful? Also: GNOME 3 is going to be met with criticism. We don't know how much, but there's definitely going to be some. Sri made a really good point to me the other day - we need well-rehearsed and effective responses to those criticisms, and this kind of community management is an opportunity to identify and rehearse those arguments. Maybe we could work together to produce some kind of PR play sheet? Or would that be taking things too
Re: Pre-release marketing and community management [Was: getting www.gnome3.org]
Hi, Allan Day wrote: Dave Neary wrote: This is something that I tried to clarify in a recent message to desktop-devel [1]. We need an easy to understand statement here and we need to spread it round a bit. There might be some usable data we can get from gitdm on the number of code committers in GNOME modules? - We need to start talking about all that's good in shell, what it brings to the table, and why it's better than what went before. Videos, success stories, interviews with happy users, all that kind of thing The first priority is to get some positive marketing on the shell out there. I'm working on the text for gnome3.org and Andreas is working on the site. Getting that up will be a good first step. I agree. Wasn't there an original vision document for shell that framed the design in terms of the stuff that we wanted to make easy, and the broken stuff we wanted to fix? I remember reading somethhing like that a couple of years back. That would be a great start. Another item that is high on my list is to turn the shell design page [2] into something positive and explanatory. Not sure when I'll get to that, but I'll try not to let it slip. Cool. (To allay fears of hardware compat issues) - Draw up a list of graphics cards used in desktop hardware in the past 3 to 5 years, ordered by market share/volume of sales, and match that to current compatibility of free software drivers for the hardware with the 3D requirements of Clutter. Ideally, someone with a GNOME 2.x desktop should be able to run a command, get a chipset, and be able to tell before he installs how well GNOME 3 will work. It'd be awesome if we had this. Someone suggested that the Linux Foundation might be able to help... I think Xorg would be a good place to start too. I found another site with a list of a bucketload of graphics cards: http://worldwindcentral.com/wiki/Video_Card_Compatibility We also need a realistic marketing message wrt hardware requirements. Some people won't be able to run the Shell, and it does us no favours to pretend otherwise. But we can still give a positive message here: 'GNOME 3 is a cutting edge desktop built not just for today but also for the future; the GNOME project and its partners are working hard on ensuring that everybody will be able to enjoy the benefits it brings.' Yeah - turning the not everyone will be able to run Shell into a positive is important, but it also makes it important that we allow people to know beforehand whether they can expect it to work or not, and that we reassure people to the user experience they get if their hardware isn't supported and they do upgrade. - Start publishing screenshots of fallback mode on chipsets that don't support it making sure it's still a nice experience. This is tricky. I'm personally unconvinced that we can have a coherent marketing strategy and promote two desktop interfaces. Saying 'we also have this other desktop which is really good' will just dilute the message. There will be people who are unable to use GNOME Shell, and we don't want them feeling too bitter but, to be honest, we *do* want them to feel like they are missing out. GNOME 3 is a great product that they should want to have. I see it more as We're not leaving our users behind, even if your hardware isn't supported, you can upgrade to get the benefit of the latest releases of your favourite applications, in a simplified 2D desktop experience (or something like that). People upgrade for the distro, or for the apps, not necessarily for the desktop environment. Yeah, it's a big job, and I'm not proposing that we attempt to take care of the whole thing (though that would be nice :) ). The idea, as I understand it, is merely to be more more efficient in what is happening already and to hone our 3.0 PR skills before the big event. That basically means sharing resources (and developing them if possible) and experiences. And positioning members of the team as legitimate people to answer classes of questions. If members of the marketing team aren't empowered to handle questions, intervene to moderate threads, etc. all the good will in the world won't make a difference. What's that saying? What do you call a leader with no followers? A guy taking a walk. A FAQ will help for the most predictable criticisms, and a list of talking points (the what's great about GNOME 3 list I mentioned above) should help us frame the messaging around the release in March, and everyone giving interviews or presentations should have these down pat. gnome3.org will do much of this. Do we need anything else? (That's a serious question - there might be.) Somemedia training half a dozen people who can handle local media enquiries and a co-ordinated conference drive where we try to get people giving presentations at conferences like SCALE, OLF, LinuxTag, etc would be good too. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org --
Re: Pre-release marketing and community management [Was: getting www.gnome3.org]
On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 9:33 AM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: Hi, Dave Neary wrote: (To allay fears of hardware compat issues) - Draw up a list of graphics cards used in desktop hardware in the past 3 to 5 years, ordered by market share/volume of sales, and match that to current compatibility of free software drivers for the hardware with the 3D requirements of Clutter. Ideally, someone with a GNOME 2.x desktop should be able to run a command, get a chipset, and be able to tell before he installs how well GNOME 3 will work. I found this: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html Which is a list of currently commercially available graphics cards Sounds like we could get a matrix list going and send a call out for volunteers to try it on the various chipsets. It is probably too early to do that just yet as jhbuilds of gnome-shell is still not quite stable. We'll need to figure out when is an appropriate time to do that. If there is a separate testing mechanism for clutter that we could use that would be great. Probably ask ebassi about that. Are we including Wayland on this as well? Probably not I guess. sri -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Pre-release marketing and community management [Was: getting www.gnome3.org]
Hi Dave, thanks for your thoughtful response.. my comments below. On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 7:32 AM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: Hi, Allan Day wrote: Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: I think in this case, we want to be a buffer between devs and enthusiasts. Ah... I'm not a big fan of buffers. I prefer trying to quieten people down when they're distracting. That means channelling the noise elsewhere, and perhaps taking a slightly drastic measure of moderating all posts to d-d-l for a few months. I think that is the action, but to be more succinct, I am saying that devs don't have to do this. For the most part they aren't but there are a number of us who are advocating for gnome-shell but we're doing it in a vacuum. I'm merely trying to get those people together to do exactly what we are doing now but in a more cohesive manner. If you moderate, you'll have a lot more angry people since it seems like you're trying to shut them up. They'll complain somewhere else. Better to let them talk and if they break the Code of Conduct, then we have grounds to kick them off the mailing list or put them into a position where all their posts have to be approved. Olav did something similar for Lefty on the foundation-list. That is a good example of managing the mailing list. It's imperative we let them talk and just as imperative we respond with data. And continue to respond. This wears out devs but it won't wear us down we're emotionally geared for it. In general, I want to address the frustration devs feel with having to continually defend design decisions by people who fear change. Characterising any questions/queries/doubts/fears about GNOME 3 as people who fear change is not going to win friends and influence people. We need to start framing the way we talk about this issue correctly, because the way we talk about it affects the way we think about it, affects the way others perceive us. OK, point taken. Let's modify that argument instead to people who are worried as there isn't any documented evidence that this design is going to work. We do not have official Gnome usability studies to back up our design of shell. We need something that we can point to that says that we thought of all possibilities. When there is a lack of evidence then indeed people do fear change. I know Jon and others are using research material, books and what not to back up their design and they have done some internal testing. None of which is public. But my motivation is really to get people off devs back so that they can focus on getting the design done. So - to summarise: the problems I've seen are: Identifying the problems and figuring out how to resolve them the first step at all. So I'm glad we are having this conversation because nobody else. Managing the people side is important since we do need to depend on these people to spread word of mouth on Gnome 3.0. * A lot of GNOME members (be it foundation members, translators, members of teams not directly involved in the shell, even members of the release team, but also those shrill activists) do not have all of the rationale thought processes that have gone into GNOME Shell. Most people have not been following the shell list or the release team archives. So some major decisions are coming out piecemeal and are presented as faits accomplis - this is the way things are, live with it. The shell team and release team have not been their own best friend in this respect. This. You've definitely identified one problem here. There is no action to plan so to speak. We look for documentation and there is nothing there. Right now, I feel new features are coming out in piecemeal. I think that's somewhat OK, provided that we have a quarterly update on what that is so that we can at least point to it somewhere in a clear concise manner. * There appears to be cognitive dissonance between the resources that some GNOME people believe are there for maintenance and the resources that are actually there - esp. related to fallback mode - panel + applets + metacity. I'm not sure I understand this point regarding maintenance. Are you referring to the maintenance of gnome 2.0? * A lot of people (myself included) are worried whether we're going to need hardware that a substantial proportion of our user base just don't have. I'm less worried about this. I make the assumption that clutter is going to work on any hardware where compiz works. In which case, I would argue that Ubuntu is making the exact risk we are by moving to Unity. Their fail back is on the same metacity, or probably whatever other third party window manager is out there. I rather we work harder on making clutter work on as many hardware devices to get as many of our existing user base as we can. And we can fix all these things by: (To fill the knowledge gap:) - Documenting any major design decisions made in the shell and their rationale, and
Re: Pre-release marketing and community management [Was: getting www.gnome3.org]
Hi, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 7:32 AM, Dave Neary wrote: Ah... I'm not a big fan of buffers. I prefer trying to quieten people down when they're distracting. That means channelling the noise elsewhere, and perhaps taking a slightly drastic measure of moderating all posts to d-d-l for a few months. snip If you moderate, you'll have a lot more angry people since it seems like you're trying to shut them up. ahem But we are. desktop-devel-list is supposed to be a list for desktop development. Not bitching about desktop development. The whole reason it was created was to get away from gnome-list. There is no place for non-developers complaining to developers there. That's what bugzilla is for. We should moderate the list, because its members are not self-moderating. We should ensure that there is a really good forum where people can go complain into the ether - we'll hear about it every now again when we mess up really badly because someone syndicated on pgo will point to a forum post. Olav did something similar for Lefty on the foundation-list. That is a good example of managing the mailing list. I think it's a really bad example, actually. How much disruption was caused by people on foundation-list before any action was taken? Far too much I would say. It's imperative we let them talk and just as imperative we respond with data. And continue to respond. This wears out devs but it won't wear us down we're emotionally geared for it. Speak for yourself :) I am as emotionally worn down as anyone, and at some stage your answer has to be put up or shut up. What gives you a sense of entitlement? * There appears to be cognitive dissonance between the resources that some GNOME people believe are there for maintenance and the resources that are actually there - esp. related to fallback mode - panel + applets + metacity. I'm not sure I understand this point regarding maintenance. Are you referring to the maintenance of gnome 2.0? Specifically, I'm referring to the mixed messaging around the fallback GNOME. Is it a deliberately pared down GNOME 2? Are significant modules not being migrated by design? Or is it simply that there are no developer resources to maintain the panel applets or Orca for the GNOME 3 fallback, and if people were to do the work then patches would be welcome? Is it a design issue, or a resources issue? I think as I pointed out before, not everything is going to be feature complete at launch. It will take some cycles before we are on par with Gnome 2.x. That especially is important since a lot of people expect to just change over. A document on who should switch might be in order. Especially since avoiding major functionality regressions was a big motivator behind the GNOME 3 development. Early on we said we're not going to have a KDE 4. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Pre-release marketing and community management [Was: getting www.gnome3.org]
On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 12:14 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna s...@ramkrishna.mewrote: OK, point taken. Let's modify that argument instead to people who are worried as there isn't any documented evidence that this design is going to work. We do not have official Gnome usability studies to back up our design of shell. We need something that we can point to that says that we thought of all possibilities. When there is a lack of evidence then indeed people do fear change. I know Jon and others are using research material, books and what not to back up their design and they have done some internal testing. None of which is public. I've heard this again and again. That there were design decisions made that were supposedly based on research and supposedly that information is public but supposedly nobody can find it. (I personally haven't looked hard for it online.) I think it would be a huge help if someone could go through and document the Design principles behind GNOME 3.0. And talk about the major features, changes and why they are good for users with pointers to any discussions or supporting research. We could make it a subpage of gnome3.org. I think having it all on one page, clearly laid out by features with rationale would be great. No matter what we write, people will argue, but at least we can point to something and say this is what and why. Stormy -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Pre-release marketing and community management [Was: getting www.gnome3.org]
On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 12:53 PM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: Hi, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 7:32 AM, Dave Neary wrote: Ah... I'm not a big fan of buffers. I prefer trying to quieten people down when they're distracting. That means channelling the noise elsewhere, and perhaps taking a slightly drastic measure of moderating all posts to d-d-l for a few months. snip If you moderate, you'll have a lot more angry people since it seems like you're trying to shut them up. ahem But we are. desktop-devel-list is supposed to be a list for desktop development. Not bitching about desktop development. The whole reason it was created was to get away from gnome-list. There is no place for non-developers complaining to developers there. That's what bugzilla is for. Yes, if you're defining developers as maintainers of core modules. Unfortunately, people will go into deskop-devel because there is no community mailing list that they can go to. So they will participate in the forum that they believe has the audience they seek. Unless you close DDL of course. We should moderate the list, because its members are not self-moderating. We should ensure that there is a really good forum where people can go complain into the ether - we'll hear about it every now again when we mess up really badly because someone syndicated on pgo will point to a forum post. How about creating a forum or something and keep such people out of the regular mailing lists instead? Olav did something similar for Lefty on the foundation-list. That is a good example of managing the mailing list. I think it's a really bad example, actually. How much disruption was caused by people on foundation-list before any action was taken? Far too much I would say. Well you really can't over moderate foundation list. Those people are well part of the foundation and our audience to some extent. They are on there because they've made some contribution in some way. Stormy has warned Lefty before over private mail. A public beating was warranted. It's imperative we let them talk and just as imperative we respond with data. And continue to respond. This wears out devs but it won't wear us down we're emotionally geared for it. Speak for yourself :) I am as emotionally worn down as anyone, and at some stage your answer has to be put up or shut up. What gives you a sense of entitlement? I'm not really that worn down. If you are, you're emotionally investing too much into it. I think once we have ordered information in hand, published it will get a lot easier to stop trolling. Right now, we don't have those things and we need to fix that. That's our job here. We have some plans here and we got some resources, let's get it done. * There appears to be cognitive dissonance between the resources that some GNOME people believe are there for maintenance and the resources that are actually there - esp. related to fallback mode - panel + applets + metacity. I'm not sure I understand this point regarding maintenance. Are you referring to the maintenance of gnome 2.0? Specifically, I'm referring to the mixed messaging around the fallback GNOME. Is it a deliberately pared down GNOME 2? Are significant modules not being migrated by design? Or is it simply that there are no developer resources to maintain the panel applets or Orca for the GNOME 3 fallback, and if people were to do the work then patches would be welcome? Is it a design issue, or a resources issue? I'm still sort of annoyed that the Orca question was not yet answered. I wish Vincent and the release team will address that soon. I agree that the fallback Gnome situation is murky. I think I liked Owen stance, that failback mode should be Gnome 3 based with a panel. I would like to see someone try to port it before release. I've been told that it was a resource issue and that there is no objection that I can tell to having applets. I think Owen wasn't against it at all from what I've read. I think if Owen thinks that then that is the stance. Perhaps we can talk with the release team behind the scenes and get clarification. We might as well address this now. We only have a couple of months left to get this working correctly. I think as I pointed out before, not everything is going to be feature complete at launch. It will take some cycles before we are on par with Gnome 2.x. That especially is important since a lot of people expect to just change over. A document on who should switch might be in order. Especially since avoiding major functionality regressions was a big motivator behind the GNOME 3 development. Early on we said we're not going to have a KDE 4. I think in that case, they were talking about API and ABI breakage. We didn't want people to port their apps to a completely new platform like what KDE4 did. That's a cruel
Re: Pre-release marketing and community management [Was: getting www.gnome3.org]
On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 3:19 PM, Stormy Peters sto...@gnome.org wrote: On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 12:14 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna s...@ramkrishna.mewrote: OK, point taken. Let's modify that argument instead to people who are worried as there isn't any documented evidence that this design is going to work. We do not have official Gnome usability studies to back up our design of shell. We need something that we can point to that says that we thought of all possibilities. When there is a lack of evidence then indeed people do fear change. I know Jon and others are using research material, books and what not to back up their design and they have done some internal testing. None of which is public. I've heard this again and again. That there were design decisions made that were supposedly based on research and supposedly that information is public but supposedly nobody can find it. (I personally haven't looked hard for it online.) I hear it on and off. I have tried to look but I don't think there is anything on l.g.o. So, they need to document something otherwise this cycle will continue. I think it would be a huge help if someone could go through and document the Design principles behind GNOME 3.0. And talk about the major features, changes and why they are good for users with pointers to any discussions or supporting research. We could make it a subpage of gnome3.org. I think having it all on one page, clearly laid out by features with rationale would be great. We didn't do this for 2.0 which fed into a lot of rage on a number of forums. Nobody could understand why we were removing features or the philosophy behind it. Because of that history, Gnome 3.0 will fall into the same cycle. Let's hope we can avoid doing it this time with a little forethought now that we are a lot more mature project. :-) I think your idea is exactly where this was heading, that's why I was interested in gnome3.org is to get people to focus on an easy to remember site where they can get all the information about gnome 3.0 they need. Keep people off the developer forums and hopefully also create something that we can get users into developers or something like that. No matter what we write, people will argue, but at least we can point to something and say this is what and why. And we should do that continually until people get it. sri -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Pre-release marketing and community management [Was: getting www.gnome3.org]
On Jan 6, 2011, at 5:00 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 12:53 PM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: Olav did something similar for Lefty on the foundation-list. That is a good example of managing the mailing list. I think it's a really bad example, actually. How much disruption was caused by people on foundation-list before any action was taken? Far too much I would say. Well you really can't over moderate foundation list. Those people are well part of the foundation and our audience to some extent. They are on there because they've made some contribution in some way. Stormy has warned Lefty before over private mail. A public beating was warranted. For heaven's sake, _please_ leave me out of your how can we keep the little people from being so gosh-darned disruptive?-fest. If you'd like to discuss an essentially chronic passive-aggressive situation where messages espousing the free software movement-approved terminology from Mr. Stallman (messages which everyone privately admits are disruptive, but suggests should simply be universally ignored, because, well, that's just _Richard_) are somehow just fine, but messages suggesting that people actually take the time to critically examine that position must be banned, I'm certainly game. If that's not what you're after, than perhaps you'd best try another tack to support your position. Feel free to moderate me here, as well, for insufficient zeal—thereby essentially demonstrating my point for me—but if you feel impelled to do so, at least do me the courtesy of leaving me out of your ill-considered examples in the future. Thanks for your ongoing consideration. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Pre-release marketing and community management [Was: getting www.gnome3.org]
On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 6:09 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna s...@ramkrishna.me wrote: We didn't do this for 2.0 which fed into a lot of rage on a number of forums. Nobody could understand why we were removing features or the philosophy behind it. Because of that history, Gnome 3.0 will fall into the same cycle. Let's hope we can avoid doing it this time with a little forethought now that we are a lot more mature project. :-) So my concern isn't making sure everyone agrees or even gets it but rather that everyone who wants to can explain why we did it (or at least point to somewhere that does explain.) Is someone willing to go through archives and talk to the people close to the decision to try to document the features and rationale? Stormy -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Pre-release marketing and community management [Was: getting www.gnome3.org]
On Tue, 2011-01-04 at 13:50 -0800, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 12:34 PM, Jason D. Clinton m...@jasonclinton.com wrote: Since it was supposed to be almost entirely video thumbnails on the front page, the videos need to go up there. And since we don't have a UI freeze for a few more months, it wasn't in the plan to have it up until then. But I think there is a value in making this a kind of process-marketing. I think we could launch the site with a Beta decal and post the unfinished videos with the time codes in them so that no one gets any ideas about posting them as the final marketing assets. Apologies if this is a discussion which has already taken place, but can I ask: are there any plans to put out positive stories and messages about GNOME Shell and GNOME 3 in the run up to the release? (And if so, what are they?!) I can see this being highly beneficial. It doesn't have to involve the gnome3 site - we could focus on getting positive stories about GNOME Shell into the press, for example. Just a handful of such stories would be immensely beneficial. Due to all the noise that we're getting on DDL, I wanted focus a little on community management from now till release. So having a website fro simple messaging sounds good. Of course, if we're using it for video thumbnails and what not maybe this might not be the best place for it. I had forgotten about the details on the marketing hackfest so I don't want to interfere with plans already in progress. The idea is to pool resources of people who are already doing community management (eg engaging people who ask questions) on g-s and ddl and maybe work together on creating a more positive impression of gnome shell. Rather than discussing the same issues, this allows developers to focus on completing Gnome 3 without the distraction of spending time trying to allay fears of change and in the process feeling stop energy. if there are real issues than perhaps we can advocate on those issues and so Jon, Owen and others can work with us rather than random people who are made about something. We've never done community management (well or at all) and it might be a good way to do a sales job on our own existing user base who fear change. It will also prepare us for after the release for questions that will certainly be forthcoming when we make presentations at various conferences. I have two conferences that I'll be talking at, Open Source Bridge and Linuxfest Northwest. I've already put in the paperwork for them and I want to make sure that I can address any users who might be confrontational. Making the effort will earn us some brownie points I think. *raises hand* Me and Sri have discussed this a bit online. There already seems to be an unorganised effort to do community management on the lists and channels. Pooling, recycling and generating resources in the fight against stop energy would only enhance that effort, I think. Allan -- Blog: http://afaikblog.wordpress.com/ IRC: aday on irc.gnome.org -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Pre-release marketing and community management [Was: getting www.gnome3.org]
On Wed, 2011-01-05 at 09:05 +, Allan Day wrote: On Tue, 2011-01-04 at 13:50 -0800, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 12:34 PM, Jason D. Clinton m...@jasonclinton.com wrote: Since it was supposed to be almost entirely video thumbnails on the front page, the videos need to go up there. And since we don't have a UI freeze for a few more months, it wasn't in the plan to have it up until then. But I think there is a value in making this a kind of process-marketing. I think we could launch the site with a Beta decal and post the unfinished videos with the time codes in them so that no one gets any ideas about posting them as the final marketing assets. Apologies if this is a discussion which has already taken place, but can I ask: are there any plans to put out positive stories and messages about GNOME Shell and GNOME 3 in the run up to the release? (And if so, what are they?!) I can see this being highly beneficial. It doesn't have to involve the gnome3 site - we could focus on getting positive stories about GNOME Shell into the press, for example. Just a handful of such stories would be immensely beneficial. I just had a little look at what other projects are doing in this regard... * The Firefox 4 site [1] has some really nice details on the upcoming release. * The Unity pages [2] are upbeat and they look nice, though rather lacking on detail. (Jono has been getting positive articles [3] into circulation, though.) * The OS X Lion page [4] describes upcoming features and explains their benefits. What are the chances of throwing together a preview page of this ilk? I could chip in with some copy... Allan [1] http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/features/ [2] http://unity.ubuntu.com/about/ [3] http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/the-evolution-of-the-linux-desktop-914736 [4] http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/ -- Blog: http://afaikblog.wordpress.com/ IRC: aday on irc.gnome.org -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Pre-release marketing and community management [Was: getting www.gnome3.org]
Hi Allan, Thanks for kicking off this discussion. Andreas and I did some work on GNOME3.org which can be found on Github: https://github.com/andreasn/gnome3-website We were pretty close - the design is done and some of the copy needs to be updated. We were waiting for some videos and screenshots and then we wanted to launch it, but it's a bit stalled. I don't see any reason we couldn't take it, update the screenshots and copy, and launch it fairly quickly. I strongly agree with you that it would be beneficial to get some positive marketing out there sooner rather than later. Paul On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 6:35 AM, Allan Day allanp...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, 2011-01-05 at 09:05 +, Allan Day wrote: On Tue, 2011-01-04 at 13:50 -0800, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 12:34 PM, Jason D. Clinton m...@jasonclinton.com wrote: Since it was supposed to be almost entirely video thumbnails on the front page, the videos need to go up there. And since we don't have a UI freeze for a few more months, it wasn't in the plan to have it up until then. But I think there is a value in making this a kind of process-marketing. I think we could launch the site with a Beta decal and post the unfinished videos with the time codes in them so that no one gets any ideas about posting them as the final marketing assets. Apologies if this is a discussion which has already taken place, but can I ask: are there any plans to put out positive stories and messages about GNOME Shell and GNOME 3 in the run up to the release? (And if so, what are they?!) I can see this being highly beneficial. It doesn't have to involve the gnome3 site - we could focus on getting positive stories about GNOME Shell into the press, for example. Just a handful of such stories would be immensely beneficial. I just had a little look at what other projects are doing in this regard... * The Firefox 4 site [1] has some really nice details on the upcoming release. * The Unity pages [2] are upbeat and they look nice, though rather lacking on detail. (Jono has been getting positive articles [3] into circulation, though.) * The OS X Lion page [4] describes upcoming features and explains their benefits. What are the chances of throwing together a preview page of this ilk? I could chip in with some copy... Allan [1] http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/features/ [2] http://unity.ubuntu.com/about/ [3] http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/the-evolution-of-the-linux-desktop-914736 [4] http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/ -- Blog: http://afaikblog.wordpress.com/ IRC: aday on irc.gnome.org -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Pre-release marketing and community management [Was: getting www.gnome3.org]
On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 2:05 AM, Allan Day allanp...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, 2011-01-04 at 13:50 -0800, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: We've never done community management (well or at all) and it might be a good way to do a sales job on our own existing user base who fear change. It will also prepare us for after the release for questions that will certainly be forthcoming when we make presentations at various conferences. I have two conferences that I'll be talking at, Open Source Bridge and Linuxfest Northwest. I've already put in the paperwork for them and I want to make sure that I can address any users who might be confrontational. Making the effort will earn us some brownie points I think. *raises hand* Me and Sri have discussed this a bit online. There already seems to be an unorganised effort to do community management on the lists and channels. Pooling, recycling and generating resources in the fight against stop energy would only enhance that effort, I think. It seems like we need two things: 1) a website to speak to the world (our our community) about GNOME 3.0 - that's gnome3.org 2) a place for all those interested in helping with community management to share stories and ideas - is that this list? Stormy -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Pre-release marketing and community management [Was: getting www.gnome3.org]
Hi, Stormy Peters wrote: It seems like we need two things: 1) a website to speak to the world (our our community) about GNOME 3.0 - that's gnome3.org http://gnome3.org 2) a place for all those interested in helping with community management to share stories and ideas - is that this list? Just to avoid a Vizzini Inigo Montoya moment later on [1], can I just ask: what do people here mean when they talk about community management? Cheers, Dave. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Pre-release marketing and community management [Was: getting www.gnome3.org]
On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 8:41 AM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: Hi, Stormy Peters wrote: It seems like we need two things: 1) a website to speak to the world (our our community) about GNOME 3.0 - that's gnome3.org http://gnome3.org 2) a place for all those interested in helping with community management to share stories and ideas - is that this list? Just to avoid a Vizzini Inigo Montoya moment later on [1], can I just ask: what do people here mean when they talk about community management? I think in this case, we want to be a buffer between devs and enthusiasts. In general, I want to address the frustration devs feel with having to continually defend design decisions by people who fear change. By continuing to address them and to focus on positive aspects of the Gnome shell design. In addition, we can also perhaps turn shrill user enthusiasts to hopefully people who will contribute positively. But my motivation is really to get people off devs back so that they can focus on getting the design done. And since you decide to give a video response. I have one in turn. :-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vdc7v4vkbJI sri -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
